According to the Mundane Principle, which I just made up, the answer to any mystery is usually the least interesting and most boring of all logical possibilities. This is essentially Occam’s Razor but with an added dose of cynicism. And it is because of the Mundane Principle, and Occam’s Razor, that I tend to think Jeffrey Epstein ended up dead on the floor of his jail cell because he killed himself — and he was able to kill himself because our government is grossly incompetent and negligent.

With that said, the so-called “conspiracy theory” — that Epstein was given a friendly assist in his suicide, or that he was outright murdered — is not, in this case, unreasonable. Indeed, it is quite reasonable. As Sohrab Ahmari has documented, mainstream journalists and media personalities have derided the conspiracy speculations as absurd and irresponsible, but they are neither of those things. It would be absurd and irresponsible to declare with certainty that Epstein was murdered at the command of one of his uber-wealthy friends, but it is justified to wonder aloud about such possibilities.

After all, the facts, as they are currently being presented, don’t seem to add up. Epstein is (was) the most important inmate in the entire federal prison system. As the head of a global sex trafficking network, his testimony could expose and destroy an array of rich and powerful child rapists across the world. Given the information he possessed, and the crimes he committed, he was in active danger from several different directions. Inmates are notoriously unwelcoming to accused pedophiles. His well-connected and obscenely rich clients had every reason to want him dead. And then there was perhaps the greatest threat to Epstein’s continued health and vitality: Epstein himself. He’d already attempted suicide once, allegedly.